Assessing the quality of academic research is important – particularly in countries where universities receive most of their funding from the government. This column presents evidence from an Italian research assessment exercise. Bibliometric analysis – based on the journal in which a paper was published and its number of citations – produced very similar evaluations of research quality to informed peer review. Since bibliometric analysis is less costly, it can be used to monitor research on a more continuous basis and to predict the outcome of future peer-reviewed assessments.

Research supervision, unlike the quality of academic research, is rarely assessed. This column proposes an index that quantifies the quality of research supervision. It shows that, on average, good researchers make good supervisors. However, many excellent researchers do not excel at supervision, and many not well-published researchers make good supervisors. Such an index could be an additional motivational factor for academics.